


i swear that we can make it anywhere.

by Prettything_uglylie



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Andy | Andromache of Scythia Regains Immortality, BAMF Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Bisexual Nile Freeman, Bonding, Booker | Sebastien le Livre Needs Therapy, Bottom Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Domestic Fluff, F/F, F/M, Family Bonding, Family Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Immortal Wives Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, James Copley is their Bosley, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Acting Like a Married Couple, M/M, Minor Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Nile Freeman, Nile Freeman & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Friendship, Nile Freeman-centric, Post-Canon, Soft Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Training, shoutout to screen junkies for this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:33:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27102004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prettything_uglylie/pseuds/Prettything_uglylie
Summary: Nile Freeman begins to live her life as an immortal warrior but she has to deal with four grown idiots as well.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/James Copley, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 93





	1. patching wounds.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, what's up! I hope you like this!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the battle, they bind each other back together. With Merrick dead in the hood of his expensive car, they know that it is only a matter of time before everything is traced back to them - the death, the decay, the bodies left behind are all theirs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, so here's a thing i reuploaded after correcting some mistakes and because my other draft was glitching to all hell! hope you like it!

After the battle, they bind each other back together. With Merrick dead in the hood of his expensive car, they know that it is only a matter of time before everything is traced back to them - the death, the decay, the bodies left behind are all theirs. 

But Nile doesn't carry that same dread feeling in her stomach that she has with a lot of her other kills - no, this feels justified, feels like a good fight that leaves her knuckles bloodied and her breath uneven but her pulse loud in her ears. She chases that feeling too rarely. 

The others don't seem to feel the same. They all pack into the car, Nicky nodding Booker into the driver's seat and pats her arm gently to make her sit in the passenger seat before he and Joe get into the backseat, bringing Andy with them - it's in moments like this that she realizes just how old they are, how easy they fall into routines they've lived with each other in for centuries now. She had never noticed how much they lean on each other, functioning like a well-oiled machine but maybe that's why it works so well for them. Maybe that's why Booker's betrayal is still loud in the air around them. 

Booker glances at her nervous, then into the rearview mirror even more nervous and his hands tighten periodically on the steering wheel - where Joe's gaze catches it at the same time hers does, he has none of the reassurance that Nile wishes to give Booker. He just looks angry. 

Andy peels her shirt over her head, the material clinging to her uncomfortably and she hisses where it sticks, caught in her wound. Nicky's hiss is not from pain but Nile is also sure it is. 

"Looks like hell." Joe confirms and it makes Nile flinch. She's confused for a moment, reminded too many times of boys in her high school being gross or perverted about a woman's body but then when she glances in the mirror, she sees Andy shirtless other than her bra, straddling Joe's lap as he holds both her hands and Nicky patches her up.

Nicky's fingers are diligent, cleaning the wound and then preparing the bit of gauze they found in the car's First Aid kit (something she herself had marked down as lucky and laughed at a bit, joined by Joe's chuckling rumble that had made her feel a little warmer) to dress it properly. He notices pieces on the cloth that are prodding and would irritate the wound further and when he glances up, she knows he sees her looking. He sees her looking at him through the rearview and with steady blue eyes that feel old in their nature - they can all pass as current people but Nicky's eyes feel ancient. It scares her just as much as it reassures her that all of this is real. 

She lets her eyes flicker to Booker and she can smell the tension in the air with them all, can't imagine the history and the pain in his betrayal but he knows the regret in the blond man's eyes is genuine - it's too hurt not to be, but she doesn't blame them for not forgiving him. 

She doesn't blame them because they all look too tired to even think let alone to deal with the emotions of the betrayal. She leans against the window, feeling the tiredness creep into her body and her eyelids get heavy. 

She falls asleep and for the first time in a while, Nile strangely does not dream of Quynh. 

* * *

Nicky is shaking her awake by the time that her eyes peel open. His smile is softer than the window she had leaned against as she slept and if she could cushion herself into the bed made in the softness of his nature, she would sleep there forever. One of his slender, Sniper-trained hands is curled in the sleeve of her bomber jacket and his light blue eyes are reassuring. 

"Wake up, Nile. We're home." His breath smells like gunpowder and blood - she remembers suddenly of Joe snapping Keane's neck against the floor after saying, _you shot Nicky. You shouldn't have done that_ but she hadn't realized it had been in the head. 

_Home_ , it's a _home_. 

Maybe, it's _their_ home. 

* * *

After she steps out of the car, Nicky's hand reassuring on his shoulder and walking into the safehouse, Nicky and Joe disappear upstairs to a bedroom with a bathroom attached on-suite according to the sounds of the shower she hears running and Booker takes to kneeling before Andy on the floor, patching up a few of her wounds better than they could in the bumpy course of the road. The image though, beats her over the head of Booker, seeking forgiveness for his betrayal, on his knees before Andy, who has been worshipped as a God before.

It feels bizarrely intimate. She glances away. 

"Nile," Booker calls out to her and when she looks to meet his eyes, he won't meet hers, "Can you get a towel from the bathroom?" 

"Sure." She agrees grateful for a mission and something to do to keep her mind busy. "Where's the bathroom?" 

Booker and Andy glance at each other, his eyes only apparently willing to meet hers but their smirks are not hidden. Booker's voice is a little more lavish when he says, "Upstairs. You saw where Nicky and Joe went?" 

She stops in her step as the weird feeling churns her stomach, "Yeah," she breathes out, "Yeah I did." 

"There." Andy agrees and she goes to protest but swallows that feeling and hopes as she heads up the stairs - there's probably only one of them in the shower and she'll ask the other to go grab a towel and they'll do that as to not create any weird situations. 

This hope, however, is demolished when she reaches the top of the flight of stairs and opens the door with a quiet knock and sees the bed empty, undisturbed. 

_Fuck._ She curses to herself before running a hand over her face and calling out, "Nicky? Joe?" 

"In here." Joe's voice shouts back from the watery shower and she cringes again before Joe calls out again, "What's up?" 

"Just need a towel." Nile aims for casual as she says but can hear it miss by a mile and land somewhere near freaking out and nervous. 

"Come on in!" He invites and her eyes widen, wondering if this is some sort of trap for her but thinking over the past week - _week_ , it's only been a _week_ since she had her throat slit in Afghanistan - and everything they've been through together, she can't see why they would want to harm her in any way. 

Sighing and taking a leap of faith off the basis of both Joe and Nicky being kind people, she opens the bathroom door and - _oh_ _fuck_. 

While if not built exactly beside the door, she could have lost her two comrades in the heat-induced steam of the room but with it where it is, she has a perfect view when she stumbles in. Nicky, with his long legs wrapped around Joe's waist, lifted against the wall as Joe takes thrusts inside of him in a rhythmic beat, one that makes Nicky's eyelids flutter. They're close enough she can't see the - uh, ahem, _private_ _parts_ \- of either of her friends but she puts the puzzle together easily and knows what they're doing even easier. 

Perhaps it's comfort sex for them. After the lab, she wouldn't doubt if either of them needs it. 

His eyelids flicker open and through thick gasps, Nicky guides her, "Bottom shelf on the left. Should be a few." 

The word thanks dies on her tongue so she just raises the towel in gratitude and he nods where Joe smirks into his collarbone and brandishes him with hickeys that disappear quickly after. 

After leaving the room, she leans against the bedroom door and breathes heavily as her heart races: _do immortal people have no shame?_

* * *

After giving the towel to Booker who had said _thanks_ to who knows? make fun of her not being able to earlier, she stands there flustered before asking, "Have either of you ever walked in on Joe and Nicky...um -?" 

"Having sex?" Andy finishes her question and after she nods, both Booker and Andy break out in friendly laughter before Andy recounts, "The time in Rome." 

"Our kitchen in Maine." Booker adds tiredly but amused. 

Andy shrugs, "The main bedroom of Portugal."

"One of Canada's closets." 

They share a look before seeming to agree, "Malta." 

She doesn't ask - she doesn't want to know anymore.

* * *

Her sleep is difficult to come to that night, waiting for the alluring comfort of them being around her like her first night but they've all filed off to different rooms, each with their own intention - while Booker had a bottle clasped in his hand and Andy patted her on the back before she went into her room, Nicky and Joe had not appeared from their room since they got there, something she was grateful for, considering she doesn't know how to look either of them in the eyes. 

When she falls asleep after a few hours of tossing and turning, she dreams of Quynh but not of the water. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you enjoyed this and kudos and comments are greatly appreciated!


	2. morning times.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nile doesn't know what to expect with a normal morning with the Old Guard but she's also rapidly learning that there is no normal with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey there! this chapter was brought to you by My Friend And I Discussing How Nicky's Accent Sounds Thicker When He Was Tired In That One Scene which devolved into Nicky Only Speaking Italian In The Morning headcanons.  
> hope you like them!

So, see - Nile has known the group for roughly a week, none of this week that she's known them, has she had a normal morning with them. The closest they have ever had to a morning perfect without anything going wrong like a kidnapping or a death, was the night she dreamt of Quynh and they told her the story of her, but then Nicky and Joe had been kidnapped so she doesn't know what to expect walking downstairs that morning. 

She almost expects gunfire. 

There is no gunfire when she hops down the narrow staircase and instead, at a crickety table generous to call a dining room table, Nicky and Andy sit across from each other, not talking but not uncomfortable in their silence. She wonders how long you have to know a person before you can work this seamlessly together. 

Nile steps out of the shadows of the staircase and glancing up from his cup, Nicky greets softly, "Buongiorno." 

His intense blue eyes are a bit dimmed with the dull edges of sleep and his tongue is heavy so she assumes that his slip-up into a language she barely knows is accidental and from context clues, she pieces together what he means - _good morning,_ just in Italian and as she nods back at him, she heads towards the coffee pot, _hot and full thank you whoever made it_ , as she considers how to ask him to teach her Italian. It's a pretty language, rolls off his tongue nicely and she expects it could be useful for the new life she is building herself.

Stepping out of the kitchen with a warm cup of coffee, she takes them in. Andy, poised across the table from Nicky with her legs folded up into her chest but still comfortable in the spine, sips her black coffee and stares into the distance as though attempting to wake herself but the bags under her eyes are deep and Nile wonders yet again if she sleeps. Nicky looks at contrast with her, well-slept enough, sipping his coffee - lighter than Andy's, she wonders if he prefers milk or cream but all she could find in their fridge was cream so she assumes - and reading from a leather-bound book, something that looks handwritten and careful with Italian writing inside. 

It takes her too long to realize it's a bible. 

"You made fun of me for being religious," She starts, settling at the table and looking at Andy but the comment built for both of them, "but he gets a free-pass?" 

Andy looks at her as though she's suddenly aware she's there, and then as though she's registering her comment before she says easily, "Nicky isn't the new kid, gets the whole Immortal-thing we do." 

"...he knows the cost of religion too." Something shadowy and murky appears in her lake blue eyes and Nile feels something stab her, it's that glimpse of grief in her eyes when she talks about Quynh, it's that brokenness she's seen too many times in her own mother. 

Nicky continues to read from his bible as though he doesn't hear them and taking the final sip of his coffee, he leans back in his chair, eyes closed and neck barred as he stares at the ceiling unseeing. He sits there for a moment and she watches with intrigue - it's a weirdly beautiful and intimate affair and when she looks back, Andy's looking at her. 

His hum and murmur as he tilts his head back towards them are quiet but she still hears, "Amen." 

It makes her stomach stir, drawing up memories of her mother scolding her for not closing her eyes during prayer and even though she hasn't been scolded by either of the older immortals, guilt flushes through her stomach easily. 

She expects some type of scolding but Andy's grin she cracks is jagged and almost mean in a way that surprises her, "He answer you, Nicky?" 

Nicky's intense and deep eyes stare into the mug he was nursing earlier as his lips twist into a frown and he murmurs, "Non è questo il punto."

_Oh, so Nicky's English isn't good in the morning_ , she realizes suddenly but still feels stupidly out of the loop. She had assumed that this would not be an issue and had known by Nicky's still surprisingly thick accent that it could be a roadblock sometimes. Nile knows, though, by the kindness she's usually been shown by the group that she is not purposefully being left out here, that perhaps they all speak Italian and Nicky has just forgotten.

It is early - around 7 am, spurred by her usual military time and whatever motivates them to be up this early - well, whatever motivates Nicky, she doesn't think Andy has slept. She imagines Joe and Booker upstairs asleep - Joe's sleeping-in provides a nicer fantasy than Booker's, who she's sure is alcohol-induced sleeping in but Joe's is brought by proper sleep and warmth and a lover beside him who like he, would die for him, in sheets that still probably smell like his partner.

She becomes aware suddenly of how long it has been since she's even gotten laid. 

Nile also becomes aware of how easy it is to feel lonely in comparison to Nicky and Joe - she thinks of the way the others watch them, equally fond and envious. She doesn't blame them, she doesn't think she's ever been so smitten and confused at a couple before, and she's spent a week with them. 

"Good morning!" Joe chirps from the top of the staircase arm swung out dramatically and helpful in alleviating any tension left in the room. She glances back to Nicky to see his face light up, his eyelids fluttering a little more open and the corners of his mouth uplift slightly into a small smile - it's upsettingly adorable how fond they are of each other still. 

"Amore mio." Nicky greets and as Joe wanders by to steal Nicky's cup of coffee, his digits run over the gentle press of the bible pages with something akin to acceptance, to reverence and she's reminded as an onslaught of the fact that they had met during the Crusades. It probably is acceptance. 

Nicky begins to chortle something to Joe in Italian and her own face must morph into something beyond confused because Joe, finally taking note of the mugs' emptiness, chuckles warmly and clutches Nicky's hand in his own, "Barriera linguistica, habibi." 

His long lashes flicker over his cheeks a few times, his face morphs into confusion than understanding, "Nile." 

She thinks absentmindedly that she likes her name in his accent. 

"Nile, I'm so sorry - " He begins, looking genuinely apologetic and she swipes a hand at him, already fond of all of their quirks, 

"No problem." She winks, a gesture to the air between Joe and Nicky before saying, "You'll have to teach me so I can keep up." 

Nicky nods. 

Booker comes downstairs and the air grows less light than it was - Andy's eyes are sadder than she's ever seen them and she says, "Hey, Book. We need to talk." 

Nile needs more coffee and maybe a morning run. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> despite how i am attempting to learn Italian and am interested in it, all of the Italian is translated from Google Translate and other fic so like, I hope it's accurate???  
> let me know what you think and thanks for reading! kudos and comments are appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> hey, yelling at me in the comments is appreciated lol


End file.
